Page:Knight (1975) Past, Future and the Problem of Communication in the Work of V V Khlebnikov.djvu/23

15 Chapter Three:

SYMBOLISM AND THE CONQUEST OF TIME.

The Symbolists were oppressed by a historical sense of doom—what Blok called "the tooth of history" or "the condemnation of time". This chapter introduces the theme of Khlebnikov's mathematical attempts to conquer time, showing how they originated in a reaction against the Symbolists' fatalism, and against the "death-wish" discussed in the previous chapter. Mention is made of Khlebnikov's 'calculation', in 1912, of the date of the 1917 revolution.